A tragedy in the classic sense

Novel a story not without hope, but that hope is hard-won

Aaron Lynett/Postmedia News

Photograph by: Aaron Lynett
, (Aaron Lynett / National Post)

review

By David Adams Richards

Doubleday Canada

Those who’ve read the stories of David Adams Richards know his world well: the bleak, otherworldly Miramichi Valley and the fallible, fragile humans who inhabit it. This is a world that frequently draws comparisons to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, where many of the same characters weave in and out of the narrative.

Indeed, Richards’ latest — Crimes Against My Brother — features appearances by Sydney Henderson from Mercy Among The Children. The childhood vow Henderson makes with God determines how Mercy Among The Children unfolds. Similarly, in Crimes Against My Brother, a childhood vow among the three main characters — Evan Young, Ian Preston and Harold Dew — puts the narrative in motion.

This vow, however, is one the boys make with each other, and is to staunchly deny God a place in their lives. With this in mind, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the later story could be viewed as retribution — perhaps divine — instead of the consequences of human actions.

Crimes Against My Brother opens when Evan, Ian and Harold are on the brink of manhood.

All three are employed by a local jack-of-all-trades and businessman named Lonnie Sullivan, who is a greedy, cunning manipulator.

He uses the boys, and others, in ways that keep them perpetually indebted to him. Then, during a terrible ice storm, the three boys are marooned on a ridge outside of town. Sullivan, in his carelessness, does not think to go looking for them. On the ridge, huddling together, the boys challenge God to prove Himself real and deliver them.

When He doesn’t, the boys spit in the direction of the church and mock the likes of Sydney Henderson. The boys interpret their survival of the storm as vindication of their vow, and resolve to ever after rely on themselves (or each other).

This pivotal event takes place early in the story. As we follow the boys through their youth and into manhood, it’s difficult not to think of the wrath (subtle, to be sure, but terrible all the same) of the God they’ve denied. Despite their childhood friendship, before long the boys have turned on each other. Partly this is driven by money, partly by their capricious employer Sullivan, partly by the death of Harold Dew’s younger brother and partly by a local beauty named Annette Brideau, who proves to be the quickest and easiest way to divide the boys.

Brideau herself becomes a major figure in the story, and despite all her small-minded faults, I found it difficult to feel anything but pity for her. Pity, indeed, becomes the overwhelming feeling as the rest of the novel unfolds — the novel takes us through a long series of petty betrayals, crushing heartbreaks, loneliness and death. That’s not to say that it’s a story without hope, but that hope is hard-won.

As a structural observation, the events in Crimes Against My Brother are framed by the first-person voice of an unnamed spectator, who speaks in a bemused, resigned way. This gives the story a forensic or academic feel — events being pieced together and analyzed by someone who already knows the outcome.

Crimes Against My Brother is a tragedy in the classic sense. I watched helplessly as characters I was fond of authored their own demise, sometimes deliberately, sometimes with the best of intentions, but in almost all cases avoidably. That’s how the best tragedies work — you know what’s coming, but you just can’t look away, and you can’t help wonder what you’d do in the same situation.

Catharsis is the word some people would use to describe this feeling, although it’s not a word that would ever be used by the likes of Evan Young or Ian Preston or Harold Dew. Finally, the question of God — and a meddling, vengeful one at that — in Crimes Against My Brother is never specifically answered.

This is good. This is in fact vital, since we must be left wondering how much is divine retribution and how much is the cause and effect of human actions. If there is a moral of the story, then, that unanswered question is where it hides, and David Adams Richards has again proven his mastery by leaving it to us to answer.

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